Welcome to COOL WALLS

Those of you close to us - especially those who follow us on Twitter - will know we're working on the launch of our city-based trend research network in early summer.

I can't share the details yet but suffice to say we're going to throw out of the window many of the assumptions that hold Think Tanks back - number one being that most spend their time producing boring reports that noone reads.

We're rejecting what Dominic Campbell and I describe as the tendency to become the "Centre for Obvious Research". Obvious stuff which is expensively commissioned because decision-makers can only do intuitive things if they have a detailed report to prove it's true. Things like this report that proves towns in Northern England like Blackpool and Burnley need to forge better links with nearby cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. Well go figure.

A new generation of designers, policy people and entrepreneurs working on movement, cities and interaction are looking for something much more open and useable. And we're basing it around photography as the starting point.

How it works

Our trend team will maintain a network of global Cool Walls. For now we're focusing on MOVEMENT. There are just three rules:

1. You must have taken the photos yourself.

2. Each must be captioned with the date and location it was taken. You can add long captions if you like, but that's your call.

(and this is critical)

3. You must set the licensing to Creative Commons.

We encourage people to keep a Cool Wall of between 20 and 30 images. About 24 is optimal. For now, we're finding Flickr is the best place to host your Cool Wall.

In early summer I'll explain how the best trend watchers will earn money watching trends that they communicate via photography, rather than earning money selling photography. This is quite a leap - but an important one. In the meantime we won't be earning money directly out of your photos. That I can guarantee.

For now, if you want to get involved, email me (with the subject COOL WALL) to sign up to follow the beta programme. Or better still participate by just setting up your own Cool Wall on Flickr and then email me the location. As a trend watcher, you can be as public or anonymous about your identity as you like. If we think it's a Cool Wall, we'll promote it. Even if you tell me who you are, I promise not to pass that on without your permission.

You can follow mine and Joe's Cool Walls for inspiration. I expect yours to be better.